FIONA HOFFER
SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Groundshift’s juxtaposition of office furniture, landscaping tools, soil, and plants aims to explore the deficiencies of the web of welfare systems that regulate resources and our institutionalized and internalized ideas of what struggles and powers are recognized as legitimate or not. In the recontextualization of these tools, I ask what could be possible in the reimagining of capitalist systems of resource regulation, their burial, their destruction, and what could emerge in their place.
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An install shot of a diptych of two performance videos in which the artist attempts to bury an office chair and a desk.
Installation view of the solo exhibition Verifying (Verificando) which took place in the cultural arts center Casa Olinka in Puebla, Mexico in 2023.
Installation view of the solo exhibition Verifying (Verificando) which took place in the cultural arts center Casa Olinka in Puebla, Mexico in 2023.
Detail image from the solo exhibition Verifying (Verificando) which took place in the cultural arts center Casa Olinka in Puebla, Mexico in 2023.
Detail image of the solo exhibition Verifying (Verificando) which took place in the cultural arts center Casa Olinka in Puebla, Mexico in 2023.
2023 Image printed at 35’’ x 39’’ Digital image printed on photographic paper, exhibited unframed and hanging from binder clips on cork board Image created by projecting a photo of the artist’s body, degraded over time by the use of a photocopier, back onto the artist with a projector and photographing the result. The black frame is a natural margin where the light from the projector ends. The Verifying photo series draws inspiration from photocopiers and identification documents to explore
2023 Image printed at 35’’ x 47’’ Digital image printed on photographic paper, exhibited unframed and hanging from binder clips on cork board
2023 Image printed at 35’’ x 47’’ Digital image printed on photographic paper, exhibited unframed and hanging from binder clips on cork board
2019 ~ 9'x8.5'x15' ~ steel, corrugated tin, concrete, cast iron, braided wire ~ Passage draws imagery from culverts, tunnels, buoys, bell clappers, and organic forms to explore themes of transition, loss, and connection. Hoffer’s work often deals with grief and memory and their artistic process for Passage began with questions. Instead of running away from grief or change, how might it enrich us to sit with loss? How can acknowledging someone or something that is lost allow us to connect with that someone or something and how can this help us forge a new way forward in times of transition? The cast iron droplets that hang from the piece were originally inspired by imagery of bell clappers and the idea of the tongues of bells existing without their bodies. Hoffer imagines these drops as voices or spirits, no longer with body, but still able to heard if the space and time is taken to connect with them.
2019 ~ 9'x8.5'x15' ~ steel, corrugated tin, concrete, cast iron, braided wire ~
2019 ~ 9'x8.5'x15' ~ steel, corrugated tin, concrete, cast iron, braided wire ~
2018 recycled wood, rusted corrugated metal and tin, plexiglass, fluorescent lights, vinyl, water, hospital gown, button down shirt, nightgown, water, pillow, blanket ~ Memory Boat is an homage to grief as a perpetual, individual journey and memory as something fallible and questionably constructed. The boat is constructed with a wooden frame and encased in metal, concealing a false bottom from which lights illuminate clothing on the inside of the boat, floating in water.
2018 detail ~ recycled wood, rusted corrugated metal and tin, plexiglass, fluorescent lights, vinyl, water, hospital gown, button down shirt, nightgown, water, pillow, blanket.
2018 image detail ~ recycled wood, rusted corrugated metal and tin, plexiglass, fluorescent lights, vinyl, water, hospital gown, button down shirt, nightgown, water.
2018 detail ~ recycled wood, rusted corrugated metal and tin, pillow, blanket
2018 digital photos of sculptural compositions, photographed on top of a light box. Wood, metal bars, fluorescent lights, transparency paper. Original sculptural compositions include clothing, hose tubing, cotton stuffing, recycled farming tools, spools of film, grass, saw blade, light bulbs, empty light fixture, dress, nylons, and other found objects.